9/16/2009 @ 6:00PM

Ten Questions For Kerosene And A Match

What is the hardest challenge your company has faced to date? Have you overcome it? If so, specifically how?

Well, on one hand, it’s obviously the economy. In my 20-odd years raising capital and running companies, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more difficult climate. Fortunately, this isn’t my first rodeo, so we’re doing just fine by being patient and pacing ourselves until all this is behind us. On the other hand, it’s incredibly difficult being patient, especially when you’ve got a real game-changing product like ours.

Which company/entrepreneur do you model your business after and why?

For innovation and risk-taking, I’ve got to hand it to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. When they first started, “search” was sort of an afterthought for the big Internet guns like Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL. The idea that search was the starting point for most Internet use, and that you could make money with it, was completely foreign. Of course, now you don’t “search,” you “google,” and it’s the most profitable thing on the Web.

For leadership, I look to Teddy Roosevelt’s style. As a leader, there wasn’t a single thing he would ask someone to do that he wouldn’t do himself, but he surrounded himself with people he knew could do it better. That’s the sign of a leader. For an entrepreneur, one of the hardest things is “let someone else do it,” so I surround myself with a team I know is better than me, and I get out of their way.

What is the riskiest decision you have had to make thus far? What specifically did you learn?

Initially, we planned on developing our technology for the network security market, which is one we’ve known well and had a number of successes. But the nature of the technology kept taking us back into multimedia discovery and processing images and video to identify the content without human intervention. It was a huge risk to switch gears after nearly a year of R&D, dropping security and going into this much larger, but much more unpredictable, market.

I don’t know that I specifically learned it this time around, but I certainly had “be flexible” reinforced. Markets–especially technology-driven ones–change very quickly and you have to be ready to adapt when new opportunities present themselves.

How many hours a week do you work? What takes up the most time? What do you wish you had more time to do?

I work all the time, but I’d have to guess that 80 to 100 hours a week are spent exclusively on the business. Administrative things–phone calls, paperwork, e-mails–seem to consume most of my time. (When you’re a small company, the CEO wears a lot of hats.) I really wish I had more time to surf.

What is the best part about being an entrepreneur? The worst?

The best part: I really like the risk and uncertainty of taking something that’s just an idea in your head and building it into something that touches thousands (or tens of thousands) of people. The worst part: The risk and uncertainty of taking something that’s just an idea in your head and building it into something that touches thousands (or tens of thousands) of people. Either way, it’s addictive.

Are you currently looking for funding? If so, how much and for what purposes, specifically?

We are looking for $3 million in funding for product development, launch, and to build out sales and marketing.

Are you hiring and specifically for what areas?

Right now, we’re looking to hire a number of software developers to fill out our engineering team.

What uncommonly good advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

I don’t know that it’s uncommonly good advice, but it’s definitely hard-earned common sense: be patient, passionate and persistent, and get yourself with the best people you can.

At every one of my most successful start-ups, “That’ll never work,” “I don’t see a market for it” and “Company X already does that,” were the only things I ever heard the first dozen or so times I pitched the company. When I was younger, I used to take it as criticism and rethink my plans. Now I know it’s a sign this company is a hit. But if I hadn’t kept pitching beyond those first 12 or so, I never would have landed the first customer or investor and built the company.

That having been said, you should also surround yourself with the best people you can. This can be tough for entrepreneurs because we tend to have an “I can do it myself just as well” mentality that ends up being costly. But delegating to good, talented and productive people not only boosts your company’s bottom line, it also saves you years of worry lines and hair loss.

What is your ultimate goal (to change the world, to go public, to put your kids in business, etc.)?

For KaaM, our goal is to make searching the way “people do” (i.e., by asking questions verbally, using pictures, etc.) part of the entire Internet ecosystem. Most of our searching today is multi-sensory non-specific kind of stuff–”Hey, kind of car that?,” “Have you ever seen this bug before?,” “What city is that building in?”–that computers don’t understand. If you could snap a picture with your cameraphone, go on the Web and ask “Hey, what kind of car is that?” you’d unlock a whole wealth of human knowledge currently locked in billions of photos, videos, audio clips, etc.

For me, my ultimate goal is get the last of my kids through college and out of the house.

What specifically did you learn about your business from taking the America’s Most Promising Companies survey?

Looking at the company in little bits and segments. As a founder, everything about the company is known. As a result, I often forget that if you’re not intimately familiar with GPU computing, massive pattern matching, software programming and the structure of search engines, you may not realize how much “stuff” on the Internet remains undiscovered.

In taking the AMPC survey, I got a chance to look at the company from a non-insider/techie perspective and learned to explain what it is KaaM does and why it’s so important with a new emphasis. I recommend that all businesses take the survey.